can’t have too much marbling, with feet to sound, an udder to good, that is too slick (in the southeast) or too fertile. As much as I tout the superiority of our philosophy when breeding cattle, if you are using bulls of known genetic value (registered bulls with genomic en- hanced EPDs), you should produce a marketable calf crop at the sale barn. As always, the devil is in the de- tails. I have spent a decent amount of my time recent- ly working on some long-range planning in the beef industry. One area that leads off nearly every session has been that quality is key, and we can’t give up ground there. Despite high cattle prices, consumers aren’t backing off because of how good the quality grade is in the beef they buy. This is great! It means consumers love something that is one of the most heritable traits we can select for and doesn’t come at a cost to other traits when selected for correctly. It sounds like we are in the driver’s seat. It gets a little trickier on the cow side of the equation. How do we keep producing the high-quality beef that there is an insatiable demand for, and do it more ef-
ficiently and therefore more profitably? We make our cows more efficient. While the heritability of marbling is .48 and hair shed is .36, foot traits are only .25. Heif- er fertility is only .15. Longevity is even lower at .09. While feet and fertility don’t come at a cost to any- thing else, if you don’t have them, they are hard to im- prove. If you have an efficient and structurally sound cowherd, you can pretty much have the calf crop to meet Certified Angus Beef specifications at a high rate in one generation. If you have all the marbling in the world but don’t have sound feet and reproductive efficiency, you can spend a lifetime working to fix it. The rate of genetic progress in the beef industry right now is faster than anyone could have ever imagined. I don’t think Mr. Singletary could even have imagined a car that moves as fast as the rate of progress geneti- cally. Much like the car that can’t be too fast, it can be too fast if you don’t know how to drive it. While mar- bling has us in the position we are in right now, feet, fertility, udders, and adaptability will keep the cow- calf producer profitable once the record prices fade.
12 TH ANNUAL FALL SALE | SMITHS GROVE, KY | OCTOBER 27, 2025 28
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